Family and Friends

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Royal Assent and the Queen

Some
right-wingers who claim to be monarchists are perennially outraged by this or that bill
gaining Royal Assent. There are valid arguments to be made for the kind
of monarchy in which the sovereign actually rules the country. I have made them myself, and am hardly devoid of nostalgia for
such monarchies. But that is not the kind of monarchy that the United
Kingdom currently has. And in our present circumstances, with so little
consensus on much of anything, there are also valid arguments for an
apolitical head of state who both sides of any particular issue can
respect. When we defend the present British Monarchy, that is what we
are defending, and it is worth defending. A Sovereign who attempted to
overrule the elected Government, in an age that worships "Democracy",
would hardly be "apolitical." So if you don't like a particular law,
blame the politicians and those who voted for them, not the Queen. And
be grateful that Britain, unlike so many unfortunate countries, has a
Sovereign at all. God Save the Queen.

This incident just goes to show the extent to which the modern monarchy is, first and foremost, about its own self-preservation. God may yet save her, but I'd respect the Queen--and Britain--much more if she had stood athwart Parliament on this issue. That would have been more than a glorious rebuke of modernism. It would have been a humble acknowledgement that the long-term survival of English civilization was more important than the maintenance of her family's official status for another generation, which is what she attempted to buy with her version of an imprimatur. Why blow your political capital to defend the sanctity of marriage when Charles might need it in a decade to save the whales for the benefit of what will be--thanks to Elizabeth--a more advanced anti-life, non-regenerating English culture?